My Love Is Cool propelled Wolf Alice into being one of the UK’s finest bands. It led to nominations for the Mercury Music Prize, an Ivor Novello Award, a Brit Award, an NME Award and a Grammy to name but a few.

However, when they finally came off the road, they were tasked with creating that difficult second album. Channelling their restless energy into a forward motion, they regrouped in London and spent intense weeks in the rehearsal room, working out their new found experiences, which manifested into a wealth of new material.

They then flew to Los Angeles to turn the songs into an album with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen. “The past two years were such amazing highs and then really extreme lows that we've never encountered before,” said frontwoman Ellie Rowsell. “That’s this album. There's some extremely concentrated emotional fluctuation.” The result is a record that, whilst it doesn’t reach the ridiculously high standard of the debut, is still a remarkable LP that puts to rest any doubts of them being a one album wonder.

‘Heavenward’ kicks proceedings off in a cloudburst of shoegazey guitar and vaulting vocals before first single ‘Yuk Foo’ shows the four-piece at their heaviest. “You bore me/You bore me to death,” screams singer Rowsell, “Well, deplore me/No, I don’t give a shit”.

‘Beautifully Unconventional’ then arrives in the form of a muscularly grooved beast that comes close to being a generic pop song. ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’, meanwhile, is possibly the finest composition on the album and exemplifies their progression and maturity as songwriters, with the beautifully paced, sweet and slow-burning romantic track telling a tale of unspoken love as Rowsell delivers a spoken word monologue.

The sweeping ‘Planet Hunter’ is another which does the hopelessly romantic angle really well as it moves from a sparse guitar arrangement to another devastating wall of sound. The spoken word then makes a return in the obscure ‘Sky Musings’ before ‘Formidable Cool’ takes the sophomore effort down another completely new road, in which the rhythm-section gives the recording a baggy sounding-vibe before the reverb-infused vocals take back control of the composition.

‘Space & Time’ then arrives in the form of a classic rock track stomper that should transfer well into a live setting, before ‘Sadboy’ then opens with a rumbling bassline and replicates the first album sound. Rowsell soon gets personal on ‘St. Purple & Green’ in which she directs the subject of her lyrics towards her family. ‘After the Zero Hour’ soon follows and is a slow, almost acoustic number that hints back at the early open mic days where the band were formed.

Closer and title track ‘Visions of a Life’ clocks in at just shy of eight minutes, in a similar vein to the motorik goodness of ‘Giant Peach’ and the bold ambition is again met in what is an epic finale to a great record. Visions of a Life is the sound of a band now truly comfortable with its identity, whilst simultaneously managing to produce an album in which no song sounds the same. It captures the excitement, torment and anxiety of being a millennial in this day and age under the backdrop of remarkable instrumentation that transcends a variety of genres. Wolf Alice haven’t rested on their laurels and have instead proven that they’ll be around for a very long time.

Paul Hill

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